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Star recipe: one raw talent, add insult to injury, leave 3 years

TWO days after 14-year-old Melbourne soccer player Jason
Davidson arrived in Japan he realised he was in for the toughest
time of his life.

He was a minute late for his first training session with an
elite Japanese junior soccer team at a private Tokyo boarding
school  and, as punishment, was ordered to shave his
head.

Worse, his new teammates had to have their heads shaved, too.
They hated him for it, and wouldn't talk  or pass the ball
 to him for three months. It would be 18 months before they
invited him to join them on social occasions.

But for Jason, son of former Socceroo Alan Davidson, humiliation
and isolation weren't the only things to endure in his quest to
become a world-class player.

In the first weeks, the teenager from West Brunswick was smacked
twice across the face by his coaches, leaving his cheekbone gashed
and bruised. His crime? Not bowing properly before a match.

"It was hell," Jason recalls. "There were guys that got broken
noses and all sorts of injuries by the coaches. In a way, I was
lucky."

But he endured the rigorous and sometimes brutal training regime
for three years, emerging at 17 as one of Australia's brightest
young prospects in the world game. Now that he is home from his
three years at Japanese League feeder club Seiritsu Gakeun, he
thinks it was worth it.

Jason Davidson's experience is proof that some parents of
talented Australian athletes are going to extremes to give their
teenagers the edge.

The spartan Japanese training regime was all about securing
Jason a spot in the Socceroos under-20 squad. And it worked, even
if it was hard on the whole family, admits his mother Effie.

As a travel agent, Mrs Davidson was able to fly to Japan
regularly to see her son but the teenager could return to Australia
for only a week each Christmas. Davidson senior, who played 51
internationals in the green and gold from 1980-1991, says the
hardships his son endured "broke my heart". But, he says, neither
has lasting regrets.

"The Japanese culture is so different and based on perfection
and doing things properly and there's no tolerance levels. For the
third year, he really struggled," he said.

"One of the hardest things that he had to learn to overcome was
loneliness. He doesn't talk about it much but he understands what
loneliness is and he's overcome it."

Jason, a former Melbourne Grammar student, was one of only two
non-Japanese students at the elite training school, the other being
a New Zealander. He was so lonely, he cried every day for months
before slowly being accepted by his teammates.

When AFL club Essendon had its pre-season camp in Tokyo at the
end of 2006, its fitness coach John Quinn asked Jason to speak to
first-year Bombers to show footballers uncomfortable about moving
from Sydney to Melbourne that they had little to complain
about.

Alan Davidson says he and his wife were willing to sacrifice
three years without their son and ride the emotional roller-coaster
with him because Japan is one of the top five nations for youth
development programs.

"In the last 30 years, FIFA has acknowledged Brazil, Argentina,
Holland and France as the best in development and in the last seven
years, they've elevated Japan into that elite group," he says.

"A lot of people are unaware of their youth programs they
don't realise that the coaches there are all South Americans."